Food stuff
To demonstrate that presentation is important when you’re promoting healthier foods, cardiologist and cookbook author Richard Collins prepared a soy burger and disguised it in a Burger King wrapper. When he let people taste it, they thought it was an ordinary Burger King hamburger. Collins thinks people choose their food by association. With a good…
Runaway Bride
Star quality is elusive, but there’s no doubt that Julia Roberts possesses it. Love her or hate her, she has the ability to light up the screen with charisma alone. She’s an actress of limited range: An inherent modernity makes her ineffective in period parts (Mary Reilly, Michael Collins) and a breezy, effusive nature keeps…
Tricky Dick
Amazingly, it’s taken 25 years since he resigned from the presidency for Richard M. Nixon to be the subject of an all-out comedy: the aptly titled Dick, Andrew Fleming’s comic reimagining of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps it’s taken so long for a Nixon comedy because as an icon — particularly as an image transported to…
Three Seasons
Three Seasons is a vision of modern-day Vietnam filtered through a veil of restrained sentimentality and seductively lush visuals. It has the sort of indirect approach to storytelling which, combined with a gaze that tends to linger over the strange appeal of nature, one might ascribe to an Asian sensibility. That would be a stretch…
Pray for the bus
More than 300 people gathered at a Ferndale church last week to pray for increased public transportation between Detroit and the suburbs. Judging from past efforts at merging the city and suburban bus systems in metro Detroit, they just might need divine intervention. Metropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength (MOSES) also announced a three-point plan…
Stoned roses
Just why England’s favorite beat-happy rock act has captured the attention of a band-thirsty world tired of Chemical Brothers run-ons and overrated indie rock survivors isn’t quite answered on The Beta Band’s full-length debut. But it does make the case that the London-via-Scotland’s Betas are all things to all people, at least all people gullible…
Housing Detroit
The City of Detroit is putting together its first comprehensive housing plan, according to Tom Walters, executive manager for the Planning and Development Department. P&DD submitted the first part of the plan to the City Council last week. "It puts out in a definitive way where the city and the private sector should concentrate its…
Steps to heaven
When trumpeter Miles Davis asked tenor saxophonist John Coltrane to join his quintet in 1955, did he realize that he was recruiting a player who would evolve into one of jazz’s greatest innovators? Probably not – in the mid-’50s the smart money would have been on Sonny Rollins as the next prime influence. On the…
Rough water in talks
Detroit water department workers say the metropolitan area’s water supply may be in jeopardy if Mayor Dennis Archer does not offer them a fair contract. With a banner that read, "Mr. Mayor don’t gamble with Detroit’s water," about 20 members of the Sanitary Chemist and Technicians Association (SCATA) and the Senior Water Systems Chemists Association…
Previously driven cars
I am not a fan of Guided by Voices because of their now mythical, rough-cut, non-sensical, lo-fi rock heroics: i.e. recording their music – partly by necessity, partly for its angsty realism – so it sounds like the underneath of an angry buzzsaw-table drowned among the weeds of a twisted British folk lyric. Instead I’m…
Charges tossed out
A district judge has dismissed misdemeanor charges against nine protesters accused of damaging a cyclone fence used to protect Ku Klux Klan members during a KKK rally at Ann Arbor City Hall last year. Fifteenth District Judge Ann Mattson said testimony, photographs and videotape failed to show damage to the fence, which, according to a…
Electro fun-ky
I-F gave the world last year’s goofiest and greatest lo-fi electro new wave classic, "Space Invaders are Smoking Grass," only to recoil in horror as every rhythmically challenged indie rock scribe in America adopted the junkyard-Devo novelty track as their critic’s fave of last year. Now, like some vintage-synth-eccentric version of Fugazi, I-F (Ferenc to…
The F Word
Jesse Sheidlower is still buzzing. It’s 9 p.m. in New York City, a full two hours after seeing the new 88-minute South Park movie — a film that crams more dirty words (excuse me, more "free speech") into its slim running time than Kenneth Starr managed to squeeze into all those boxes of Monica evidence.…
Negative Approach
Emerging from Detroit’s legendary early ’80s punk rock scene, Negative Approach had a brief but influential career. The band recorded just two official releases (one a 7″), but quickly gained a loyal cult following due to punishing live appearances both locally and at key NYC punk clubs. Now long defunct, their bruising brand of punk…
Stan fans?
Stephen A. Holmes: "I must say, I shall miss Stanley Kubrick. I have enjoyed and analyzed his films since my pre-collage days. As an avid fan of every frame since Killer’s Kiss to Full Metal Jacket, in his latest film I expected and appreciated no less than a masterpiece. Eyes Wide Shut delivers Kubrick’s trademark…
Blue Dog
From the far reaches of Sun Ra’s outer universe to the mean streets of the MC5’s Detroit, Motor City avant-changelings Blue Dog have forged a legacy of independence, musical transcendence and unparalled virtuosity. And they do it all in the name of fun!
Fortune tattling
The phone rang, and as usual I grabbed it as fast as I could. "Thank you for calling the Psychic Network," I said, mixing my normal "come on kids do the dishes now!" voice with a breathy attempt to sound otherworldly. "I’m Deborah." (Deborah sounds more mysterious than Debbie.) "Can I have your name and…
Shine on
Reggae crown prince Dennis Brown stirred the pot of the soul with his lover’s rock….
Getting psyched
The first thing you need to understand about Ann Arbor’s Jewel Sheldon is that she comes across as one of the most reasonable, practical people you’ll ever meet, a straight-talking, 4X4-driving, middle-aged mom who grew up outside Battle Creek. The second thing is that she’s a professional palm reader and spiritualist who makes a living…
Downtown Hounds
The eclectic Blue Dog is giggin’ hard!
Eyes on the power
During a taping of Michael Moore’s Bravo cable TV series, "The Awful Truth" that I attended in Chicago, the show’s affable host posed a question. "Who controls the world, governments or corporations?" he shouted to a crowd of almost a thousand. "Corporations!," thundered the almost unanimous reply. Of the world’s largest 100 economies, 51 are…
Old School Benefits
L.A. rhymers Jurassic 5 make no bones about the “up” in straight-up hip hop.
Rockin’ downtown
"They say that when a person is walking past a store window, you only have eight seconds to grab that person’s attention," says Bethany Bain-Chamberlain, Ferndale’s downtown development director. As fast as an eye-catching window display, the hook in a pop song, or a scene in a movie trailer, Bain-Chamberlain – with her striking looks…
In one ear
RETURN OF RENDEZVOUS ROCK They said it couldn’t happen, and then it did. This year’s Gutterfest lineup has been unleashed and there’s some headline news to be read. The third annual throwdown of this city and the world’s finest from the genre which has become known as garage rock to be held Sept. 9-11 at…
Time-travel diner
The menu tops out at $1.61 for a double cheeseburger. The hamburgers are small and very greasy, but flavorful. Are they better than burgers at Big Boy or Wendy’s a couple doors down? No.
Millie and the ballpark
Next month, Detroit and Kansas City will play the last major league baseball game, ever, in Tiger Stadium. When it ends, the fans will rush onto the field, despite tons of security, dig up sod to take home and put in their freezers, and behave more or less badly. This is Detroit, after all. Next…
Deep Blue Sea
“Call me Ishmael,” the narrator of Moby Dick begs of his readers in one of the most dramatic opening phrases ever uttered. After that there’s no escape from “that intangible malignity” which is Melville’s book about whale fishery, one obsessed captain Ahab and the arch-whale Moby Dick, the embodiment of “all the subtle demonisms of…
All bets are off
The Lizard of Fun is sitting in front of my computer, clicking away like a debt-plagued doctoral student practicing for a stint on "Jeopardy." "You’re not surfing that voyeur Web site again, are you?" I ask, wandering over to see what’s so engaging. "You haven’t blinked in an hour." "We lizards can do stuff like…
Dick
The excitement among the political press corps when the Lewinsky story broke was palpable: A new generation of reporters would get their very own Watergate and the opportunity to walk in the shoes of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But as Clinton headed toward impeachment and the public showed disgust not just with the political…
Free cops and boat girls
POWER SHIFT The moment their last shift as police officers ended, Sgt. Danny Fields and Lt. Harry Reynolds headed over to John Barleycorns, a bar in Mt. Clemens, to celebrate. Never mind that it was Saturday morning at 7 a.m. — the duo, who had been to police academy together and started service the same…
Regret to Inform
Every war story can be told from a variety of viewpoints – from that of the winners or the losers, the politicians or the soldiers, or, as in Barbara Sonneborn’s documentary Regret to Inform, the widows of the dead soldiers. This may be the most painful viewpoint of all because it’s the hardest to rationalize.…
